Monday, July 23, 2012

Cross Country Madness

Sunday gave us one last sweet light and thermic day with a high cloud base. The Makapuu crew took full advantage and sent three brave souls far downrange, to meet the Kahana pilots at Puu Piei and gaggle up from there for the gravy portion of the trip. Jorge, Dave and Doug all flew to Laie - the first two landed at Hukilau Beach Park (for a 29.5 mile distance) and Doug landed on the tip of Laie Point for extra style points! Looking forward to stories, pictures or video from those guys!

My story began at Kahana as Mad Dog and I took Woody and JJ for an incredible thermal jaunt above Sacred Falls, and we watched as Mad Dog ventured quite deep into boogaland from the Punaluu side.

It was an amazing day to be riding thermals. I don't think I've ever enjoyed nicer ones here: fat, smooth, and strong, with little wispy clouds forming in many places but not so thick to worry about whiting out. Mad Dog and I left Sacred Falls with about three grand, and proceeded to milk out our glides toward the golf course. We almost made it, but we played it safe and landed at the last corner of Malaekahana. Thanks to JJ for the pickup!

Duck and Bill followed later, with Duck at Pounders, and Bill at Hukilau, I think. Jeff flew to Punaluu in a lull, and then squeaked out a glide back upwind to Chings. Canada Greg and Harvey and JJ's wife Dawn also flew.

I could hear tons of folks at Makapuu as well: Thom, Jim, Allegra, Joey, Reaper and Annette, Allan, and others. I could also hear one strangely familiar voice amidst the babble of radio chatter, but what he was saying didn't make any sense: something about flying XC to the sleeping giant. Turns out it was Kauai Joe and Bob, and they could hear me too. That's 100 miles away. Didn't think our radios worked that far - and mine is set to transmit on low power. The visibility was exceptional on this day - maybe radio waves like those high visibility days better, I don't know.

I took no pictures, only video, which I'll try to put together at some point. The views were incredible above the wispies at Sacred Falls - I hope my footage does it some justice.

2 comments:

Waianae Jim said...

Nice flights Dave, Jorge & Maui Doug.

Thom said...

Congrats Maui Doug, Jorge and Dave. But I am glad the Maui crew of JJ and Family got some great flights in too.

Jim and I got spanked numerous times heading down range from MPU. We squeaked back lower than low with Jim winning scratch award coming around the corner below pine tree corner at 500 feet.

We made that trip too many times then gave up and landed.

We tried 3 made it, awesome day.